


Little Do You Know

by Solstarin



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 18:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10792749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solstarin/pseuds/Solstarin
Summary: I wrote this in one sitting with twenty minutes of proofreading, finished at 1 a.m., with Little Do You Know by Alex & Sierra on repeat.





	Little Do You Know

**Author's Note:**

> Find me here < http://nerddface.tumblr.com/post/160175039508/little-do-you-know > to replace Y/N with a name!

It was quiet. Beyond the window the sounds of an unfamiliar world thrummed on, but the only sound Loki could hear was her breathing. 

She’d been asleep for nearly an hour now, assured that he would join her at the end of the chapter of the book he was on. 

The pages had been all but forgotten at this point, as his gaze was drawn past the binding and onto the woman lying beside him. Her hair, tucked neatly over her shoulder, shone silvery in the mixture of moonlight and street lights. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and one of her hands had come to rest in the crook of his elbow, holding him gently. 

And he was terrified. 

He was bad. A hundred years ago he may have been trying desperately to be good, to be the heir his father wanted, but now... it all may as well have not happened at all. He was exiled, disowned, shunned by all who laid eyes on him. He knew what he did was bad, and not a single day had passed since he was taken back to prison that he didn’t regret what he had done. But now he was reaping what he sowed-- nightmares plagued his sleep, and the ghosts of his actions haunted him in the day. Thor didn’t trust him by any stretch of the imagination, and his old friends considered him an enemy. Which, he supposed, by all accounts, he was. Even his mother was dead, by some extent because of him. 

His mistakes were slowly drowning him, and despite trying to put everything back together shard by shard, the cracks were too deep for things to come back together the way it was before. 

Even when he was given a chance to work with the Avengers to rebuild his name-- a chance he didn’t deserve --he was treated as an outcast, an underling, a villain. It was fair, all things considered. But it still hurt, the way he was regarded by his new (albeit unwilling) teammates.

Except... for her. 

At first, it confused him. Despite never receiving one in return, all she had to offer him was a smile. Then, it made him furious. No matter what he did to her, she would brush it off, tell him she forgave him, and continue with her day. She hadn’t even hardly reacted when he woke her in the middle of the night with a snake in her bed, something that reliably drove Tony Stark to hysteric anger. 

Her persistent kindness broke him. Nothing he had done warranted this kind of behavior, and he finally told her through frustrated tears after she had defended him against her own friends after a botched mission; the men she boarded with, the men she fought alongside. He was even more angrily perplexed to see this draw tears of her own, but he was finished resisting, and when she took him into her arms, her heart, and her home, he fell into them wholeheartedly. He hardly knew anything about her, only that she was the first being to show him any sort of love in nearly a decade, and he was a dying man in the desert.

He wasn’t ready to admit it to her, but he had fallen head over heels in love. He wasn’t sure how it happened- he hardly thought it was even possible, especially not for someone as polar opposite to him as she was. And yet, as he studied the delicate shadows her eyelashes made on her cheekbones, he found himself genuinely wishing this moment would last forever. Every time he weaseled a smile out of her, every time she brushed her fingers through his hair, every time spent an evening like this, safe and quiet, his heart felt as though it might take up his whole chest. He tried so hard to toy with her, to drive her to the point he’d driven everyone else in Avengers Tower, but it never phased her. He might have gotten away with more than his share of shenanigans when he was still a prince, but none of it worked on her. It didn’t help that he underwent what had felt like a hundred different sigils to dampen his magical abilities enough so he couldn’t hurt his hosts. As skilled as he was, he couldn’t figuratively smuggle magic past a ward. 

So he was left with nothing but his bare hands and his tongue, both of which seemed only to work intermittently. Lately, he was beginning to learn her intricacies; what she liked, what made her eyes glint with frustration behind that gentle smile. At first, he had thought to use that to his advantage, work his way into the best places to strike at the foundations, but the more he kissed her, the more she fell asleep beside him like this, sure she would be safe, the more he second-guessed those intentions. 

He really ought to teach her a lesson, letting someone like him in so easily, but... even the thought of her crying over him like she had already brought a deep crease to his brow.

Lifting his hand from his book and hers off his arm, he reached to stroke her hair, content he could show his affection with none the wiser. 

“I will love you like no other being ever has,” he promised the silence. “I swear to you, you will never need fear me.” She reached for his warmth again, with both hands this time, and turned to her side to ball his thin sleeping tunic into her fists, but her lids were still, and she slumbered on. He paused a moment to allow her to drift back into deeper sleep peacefully, his thumb slowly smoothing down the little wispy hairs at her temple. 

“I cannot comprehend why...” he drew in a shaky breath. “ _Why_. You keep me here, at your own expense... and I don’t... understand. You are-- so... not me. Everything about you is like a perfect alternate of me. I am curious as to how you tolerate me.” He listened to a dozen more questions rattle in his mind, but kept them there, shook his head to clear them. He looked down and decided it was time to put his book away and settle. Tomorrow was another taxing day proving his changed heart to the people who sent him to prison. 

He dog-marked his place and set the book on the nightstand, turning to his sleeping... he couldn’t place a proper name for her. Lover seemed to serious, too intense. Sweethearts was too playful. They weren’t friends, not exactly, and they weren’t quite colleagues, either. She was his Y/N, and... he wasn’t sure what else.

“How well do you know I love you, I wonder?” he asked quietly as he opened her palms to free himself and took her into his arms. The jostle in the bed woke her slightly, enough to where her eyes were pried open and he caught a flash of her irises before she tucked her head under his chin and her arms close to her chest. She sucked in a deep breath and relaxed, slinging one significantly shorter leg over his. 

Feeling a smile unwittingly spread his lips, he pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to have this kind of unconditional love from such a creature. He certainly wasn’t supposed to feel this secure with her in his arms. But none of that mattered right now, and he was going to relish every single moment he had with her while it lasted. 


End file.
